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Using maple sap

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Pat Dillon

NewBee
Registered Member
May 19, 2013
7
0
0
Green Bay Wi
Good Evening,
I have a question for my fellow mead makers.I am looking to make heavy duty Braggot/Barleywine
using maple sap for the water component I plan to boil down apx.10gals.boiling down to 5gals.
This along with my honey component I hope will create sweetness and give me a large specific gravity
THANX for any help.I know Iam suppose give an exact recipe but haven't decide on one yet:confused:
 
There are a few threads on using maple sap around here, but I don't think anyone spoke about actually boiling the maple sap down.
 
Pat Dillon said:
Good Evening,
I have a question for my fellow mead makers.I am looking to make heavy duty Braggot/Barleywine
using maple sap for the water component I plan to boil down apx.10gals.boiling down to 5gals.
This along with my honey component I hope will create sweetness and give me a large specific gravity
THANX for any help.I know Iam suppose give an exact recipe but haven't decide on one yet:confused:
Click to expand...
Well if you're making a braggot in a beer-like way, whats the point of using maple sap ? Won't the malt and other stuff bury the tiny amount of flavour you'd get from the sap ?

Surely if you have access to enough trees for a decent quantily of sap its gotta be better to make an acerglyn ?

Also, when they boil down the sap what is the level of reduction to get a reasonable level of taste ?

Etc etc.......
 
fatbloke said:
Well if you're making a braggot in a beer-like way, whats the point of using maple sap ? Won't the malt and other stuff bury the tiny amount of flavour you'd get from the sap ?

Surely if you have access to enough trees for a decent quantily of sap its gotta be better to make an acerglyn ?

Also, when they boil down the sap what is the level of reduction to get a reasonable level of taste ?

Etc etc.......
Click to expand...

It's a lot more than half I can tell you that. And, I also remember that the guy making the mead with sap didn't get any resulting flavors. Of course, who knows what might happen after a few years of aging.
 
mannye said:
It's a lot more than half I can tell you that. And, I also remember that the guy making the mead with sap didn't get any resulting flavors. Of course, who knows what might happen after a few years of aging.
Click to expand...

Found this on a maple syrup making site:
"Maple sap from the trees contains about 2% sugar, while finished syrup is between 66%-70% sugar."
"The rule of thumb is about 10 gallons of sap per tap on a good year, or about one quart of finished syrup."

So to get a real maple syrup flavor you have to boil down by a factor of 30 to 40. I have no idea what intermediate levels of concentrating the sap would do for a mead.
 
Pat Dillon said:
Good Evening,
I have a question for my fellow mead makers.I am looking to make heavy duty Braggot/Barleywine
using maple sap for the water component I plan to boil down apx.10gals.boiling down to 5gals.
This along with my honey component I hope will create sweetness and give me a large specific gravity
THANX for any help.I know Iam suppose give an exact recipe but haven't decide on one yet:confused:
Click to expand...

There is a 40-to-1 ratio between sap and syrup -- on average. It can be more or less. Basically, your 10 gallons of sap has the potential for approximately one quart of syrup.

[Edited to correct ratio - my first boil was 78:1 this year.]
 
OK,So what I am hearing is that that I wasting time. So I think I will follow the suggestions and make a kick butt Acerglyn
Do know of a barley wine recipe that has maple syrup component.Remember life is to short to drink cheap booze!
 
The SG of the sap will vary based on at least weather conditions, time of year and type of maple. If I remember correctly to get a syrup the ratio for sugar maples is around 35:1 but for Big Leaf Maples (which is what I have tried) its more like 50-55:1.
Just last week I racked the mead I made with what I tapped late last year (Big Leaf Maple flows start in the late fall and throughout the winter as opposed to the sugar maples which flow in the spring). The SG right off the tree was 1.010 I pasteurized 6gal at 160+/- degrees on my wood cookstove for a number of hours, simmering off about a gallon. I made a 5 gal batch with OG at 1.110 that finished quite dry to FG of 1.000 when I racked last week. I also did a 1 gal batch that started at 1.120 and finished at 1.015.

PS- I also racked a 3 gal carboy made with spring water OG 1.123, FG 1.022; 3gal made from my well water SG 1.123 and FG 1.082; and 3 gal of cyser OG ? ? ? and FG 1.026. Now comes the hard part, waiting. :cheers:
PPS - It looks like both of my hives survived the winter!!! Good job girls!!!!:thumbsup:
 
Last edited:
150 gallons on sap...to produce 1 gallon of birch syrup. 400 trees to make 30 gallons. I have 1 tree....cant see myself collecting it for years to slightly flavor some mead. Will leave that for the mass producers.

Sent from Arthur Dent's towel smothering a volume of Vogon poetry, some of which just leaked out.
 
Wow. Now that's a rare product. I don't even want to see that gas/oil bill.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now. G
 
I've been waiting for a proper opportunity to share the lessons of my first trial in meadmaking, and here it is!
DON'T use maple syrup in any part of the process except back-sweetening! Especially don't use it as early as the beginning!
While I'm not 100% sure of the chemistry, the core fact is this: There's a reason you can't keep pure maple syrup unrefrigerated for prolonged periods of time. It doesn't have a high enough sugar concentration to prevent spoilage.
Using it to back-sweeten is different due to the presence of alcohol, which keeps bacteria and mold at bay.
If this is the case with maple syrup, which has been boiled and concentrated, then I can only imagine how easily maple sap might spoil, given its composition.

My lesson comes from having tried a 100% maple syrup mead as my first project. I was VERY newbie-squirrely-cautious about sanitation, sterilization, control, exactness, temperature, daily checks, everything. 8 weeks after starting primary, into the bottles it went. Two days later, it tasted curiously.... "citrus-y". Two weeks in bottle, same thing. Drank it with my family regardless. What happened? We all got the sh*ts. Every time, too.
Moral of the story: Maple is delicious. You want it. I want it. We all want it. But I'm not so sure we're ever gonna get it. At least, not in this way.
 
I don't understand... If you boiled this down at least a bit and used it in creating your must, shouldn't that part at least be sanitized, making the spoilage not come from the maple? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you have a maple show mead at 1.100 and a honey show mead at 1.100. Both musts have been boiled prior to pitching the yeast (of course leaving some time for the musts to cool down first. I would think the likeliness of spoilage is more or less equal. Honey is naturally acidic making it less susceptible to some spoilage bacteria so that might be a factor... But then adding some citrus can compensate. Maybe there is something else about maple too..
Although any food item could spoil in such a way that no matter the amount of boiling or sanitation could redeem it. The "feces" from some bacteria can lead to a form of chemical poisoning which cannot be taken out of the product (this is if I can remember what I learnt in my food handling course well).
So maybe you need good sanitation when collecting the maple sap..Could also be unrelated to the maple, depending on the recipe and method used.
Whatever the case, thanks for the heads up, even though I won't be personally using maple since we don't have maple trees in Malta
 
I was told by someone selling syrup at my local farmers market that it needs to be refrigerated or frozen. I assume that the dude knew what he was talking about.
I tried to make maple wine last year, thinking that I'd end up with something close to sherry. It was the only batch I've dumped, and an expensive one at that. It got really thick and runny (think snot) and tasted like death - sherry notes but overarching freak nasty. Just wrong. It could have been my sanitation practices or a chance infection but regardless, it's not an experiment I'm likely to repeat.

In other news, I have a bottle of hickory syrup which is quite delicious. Sweet and smoky and wonderful.
 
I had a bottle of very expensive maple syrup in the pantry for a while. New Hampshire stuff my neighbor gifted me.

It sat there for a while and I always thought maple syrup was like honey and had a long shelf life but nope. It had a nice thick cap of green mold on top. A gallon of delicious maple syrup! Needless to say I scraped the cap off, boiled and transferred to individual quart bottles, but it proved that maple syrup isn't invulnerable!


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now. G
 
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